


Cheers

by zobo900



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura and Keith friendship, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Big Brother Shiro (Voltron), Bisexual Lance (Voltron), But they dont get happy, Character Death, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gay Keith (Voltron), I'm Sorry, If I cry writing this I wont be surprised, Keith/Lance (Voltron) Fluff, Lotor's a dick, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Shiro's sickness, Slow Burn, Sorry Not Sorry, Swearing, Theres a bunch of klance, Trans Female Pidge | Katie Holt, do not copy to another site, just because I don't feel like it, probably no smut, road trip au, they're bros
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-14 20:08:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17515175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zobo900/pseuds/zobo900
Summary: Keith is the new kid at school. It's his senior year so he expected everyone to ignore him. He expected to be left alone. Lance had a different idea. From the very beginning, he decided Keith was worth meeting, and now he was just always there. Just how far will Lance go to follow Keith?





	1. Chapter 1

On the morning of my first Thursday at school, I was hoping for silence. I was hoping for the same mediocrity that befell me the days before but it shattered the second Lance McClain stumbled through the door in flip-flops, sunglasses, and a billowing jacket. He had two Starbucks cups in his hands dripping with sweat from the outside that refused to believe summer had ended.

"Mr. Jenkins! You've aged so many days it's like looking through cheese holes!" he exclaimed, breaking Mr. Jenkins's instruction as he attempted to introduce the day's lesson.

"Lance. You're late." The class grew quiet at Mr. Jenkins's stern glare.

"Bad time?" the boy chirped. 

"Late time. Sit down."

"Yes, sir!" He gave Mr. Jenkins finger guns and clicked his tongue. He plopped the second, darker, Starbucks cup on someone's desk and the ice jangled within the confines of the cup. Katie, who I learned yesterday prefer to be called Pidge, snatched it with a swift thank you nod. Lance smiled at her proudly, like the coffee was his great honor to bestow. Then, for some reason, he continued sauntering toward the back of the class, toward the only open seat, right next to me. Great.

He didn't sit so much as fall into the chair. The table shifted in reaction to his clumsiness, and he piled his stuff next to the table leg.

I tried to ignore him, I really did. For brief moments I remember him fading into the background of the lecture, and I managed to pay attention. Then that idiot would squeak is chair extra loud, lean over to whisper a message to someone he knew, or, like what happened every five minutes, he would drop something and go fishing around on the ground for it.

Mr. Jenkins's voice rose slightly and pitch, and he gazed around the room purposefully.

"Now, pay attention, this will be on the test." I took out my pen, ready to scribble down whatever he had to say.

"So-"

"Hey, tell Paige she doesn't have to pay me for the coffee if she helps me pass my biology class."

I pulled the edge of my hair and stared forward, maybe I could read his lips.

"I'll repeat-" Someone tapped Lance on the shoulder, and he bent over to listen. The table, and my poised pen, bent with him. A harsh blue line sprinted after the tip of the ballpoint where it raced away. I grabbed my notebook to steady it and blocked out whatever was happening on Lance's side of the table.

"She says you can fuck off," the other guy informed in a voice that was definitely not a whisper.

Lance shifted obnoxiously again to see Pidge who had her middle finger aimed in his line of sight. He flung back and gasped dramatically in his seat with a hand to his chest. The kids who were helping them pass notes started covering chuckles with their hands and bowing their shaking shoulders. Soon, Pidge and Lance were in a full-on whisper battle punctuated with small hidden hand gestures and expressions.

"Come on, Pidge! I thought we were friends!"

"Exploitation it's not in my job description."

Lance leaned all the way over on the table, so one of his freakishly long arms poked into my half of the work space. My half.

He whined, "Pleeaaasse-"

"Would you shut up?" I hissed. 

They all turned to stare at me, and I immediately lost 75% of my bravery, but I was already there. Now I had to hold my ground. Even under Lance McClain's stare which I really want to laugh at. His mouth was slightly agape in shock that I'd confronted him. I bet he was rarely confronted, especially by some new kid who preferred the protective shadows of the back corner.

A single eyebrow was arched, bragging that he was part of the population that could do that. His eyes regarded me with an unwavering confidence. They were startlingly blue.

"Uh-hm," coughed Mr. Jenkins.

I jerked my head around to see that the entire class had stopped to pay attention. I guess I was louder than I thought.

"Is there a problem?" he queried with sarcastic annoyance. Don't get me wrong, I loved Mr. Jenkins, just not when he was making a spectacle of me in front of the entire class. I felt my face grow hotter against my wishes.

"Not a one, dear sir, but thank you for your concern. I'm flattered," Lance joked easily. He paused to wink at me like we were in this together or something. I just rolled my eyes. What an idiot.

The shuffling sounds of shifting attention blurred through the air once Mr Jenkins half-heartedly responded to Lance with a sigh and a scold. He'd probably been dealing with this since freshman year. I could only imagine.

To my surprise, Lance actually stayed quiet for the rest of class, and I was finally able to learn what was going to be on that test. Especially since Lance's friends seemed to follow him in silence. If Lance was quiet, you knew it was time to shut up.

The bell sounded to end Mr. Jenkins's sentence somewhere in the middle. He rushed out the rest of his thought while everyone packed up to go to lunch.

I was prepared to find another shadow protected corner, but Lance obviously had other plans. He hobbled after me in those ridiculous flip-flops scandolously balancing his things on any limb that had an open space. Pidge groaned and shuffled to keep up.

"Slow down, I must meet you random person," he begged. I barely registered he was talking to me until he swung around in front of me, so I was forced to face him. He smiled victoriously.

"What do you want?" I groaned over the sound of my stomach. I hoped it was only loud to me.

"I'm Lance," he started. 

"I know." That was weird, why would I say that?

"You know?" He did that thing with his eyebrow, and I couldn't help but scoff.

"Mr. Jenkins has probably recited your full name a thousand times since the beginning of school, so I'd have to be stupid to forget it at this point."

I tried to walk around him and continue on my way, but he hopped in front of me again and walked backward in the same direction. People cleared away and gave him dirty looks at the sight. 

"And your name is?" He waved his hand suggestively.

"Keith."

"So, Keith, are you new or something? I haven't seen you around before."

"You guessed it," I sighed and stopped walking, seeing that Lance was undeterred by having to go backward.

"Well then I have to give you a tour," he expressed as if it was obvious.

I objected, naturally, "That's not necessary."

"It's really better if you just go along with it," Pidge informed me. I gave her a look of dread, and she only shrugged.

I sighed in defeat and maybe a little contempt, "Fine."

Lance beamed and whipped around to lead me down the hall.

I zoned out once he started talking. It was easy to ignore his words and simply focus on his fluid gestures that neatly matched his lilting tone. He stumbled often, so we would stop while he got his balance and apologized to anyone he'd inconvenienced.

We passed through the math hallway that Pidge evidently knew plenty about since she kept correcting Lance. He would react each time with the same small smirk and slow blink. Then he'd act like being corrected didn't bother him.

Pidge threw away her coffee when we turned the corner into the science hall. It clunked into the trash can too fast, so the edges of the bag flumped to the bottom.

She pierced my wandering gaze with her own and a sharp finger. "Pretend that didn't happen," she commanded. I did a weird sort of head nod that involved too much of my shoulders.

Somewhere in between the only boys bathroom with more than one working toilet, I learned that the long way, and the cafeteria, Lance accidentally ran into a freshman girl whose things littered the floor noisily. He apologized, of course, but wouldn't shut up once he saw her engineering textbook. Apparently, that was his favorite class.

Aside from those occasional moments, the tour blurred behind my worries that I wouldn't have sufficient time for lunch. The minutes went faster.

Once we passed the art room decorated in multi-media works, he faced me again to see that my thoughts had wandered. I felt his stare before I even met his eyes, and he was glaring in the harshest way I think he could manage. It was almost laughable.

"You're not paying attention," he accused. I feared he'd waste even more of my lunch retouring if I admitted to it.

"What? No," I lied and readjusted my backpack strap as we continued down the hall.

"Oh, yeah?" he challenged. "Mr. Davis! Can I borrow your expertise for a brief moment? I need to prove someone wrong," he called to a security guard with a pink taped walkie-talkie on his hip.

"Sure, Lance. If you can promise me I won't find you in the halls during class so much this year," the old man chuckled. He shared Lance's beaming smile which I don't remember fading since the chenistry lab five minutes ago. Lance threw his arm around Mr. Davis's shoulder but let it drop off when he got a funny look.

"I'll do my best, but you know I can only control the universe's will to an extent. And it wants our paths to cross," he said. The security guard rolled his eyes but continue to smile.

"Always blaming the universe," Mr. Davis said.

"I mean, it's usually the universe's fault. This is Keith. He's new," Lance introduced without directly looking at me.

"Nice to meet you Keith," the man said, suddenly much more formal. I pressed my lips together and nodded politely.

"So, Keith," Lance began loudly. "If you truly were paying attention, you'd know my good friend Mr. Davis here's favorite thing for lunch. So, go ahead," he beckoned.

His tour must have been really specific. I suddenly became relieved that I'd ignored him all that time. There were some things I didn't want to learn about this school.

"Just because I don't know the answer to that very specific question, doesn't mean I wasn't paying attention," I argued. For some reason, I couldn't let him have the satisfaction of winning. Pidge snorted next to me then continue doing whatever was so interesting on her phone. I could still feel her silent judgement.

"Oh, so you're going to play it that way. Okay, tell me one thing we saw on the tour," he huffed with crossed arms over his chest that rose and fell in premature victory. 

"Mr. Davis," I offered. The shade of red that Lance's otherwise coppery skin turned was beyond worth missing my lunch for.

"That's not fair! You're a cheater!" he exclaimed like it was a far more personal offense than it really was.

"Lance, bring your voice down," Mr. Davis warned when other students turned to look at him. It seemed like people were always watching him, and he didn't seem to mind. He sighed, and his hands dropped from the air like rocks and crumpled into fists at his sides.

The walkie-talkie made an unintelligible noise and Mr. Davis left down the hall.

"To be fair Lance, you did make the rules," Pidge said with a hint of amusement.

"You're supposed to be on my side!" he gasped. 

"I'm on the side of science."

I wondered if I escaped then if they would've even noticed. They were so enthralled in their own conversation they probably wouldn't have registered my swift flight back to the shadows. I lost my opportunity when Lance fixed his eyes on me, and with that he pulled me from my corner once again.

"Won't you just accept that you've lost?" he whined. His face was pulled together in an expression of overdramatized pain.

"As far as I'm concerned, I haven't lost." I shaved my hands in my pockets like it would help hide the laughter threatening to boil over.

Lance sputtered. I thought I broke him. Paige raised her hand to give me a high five, but it took me too long to recognize what she was doing, and I ended up staring awkwardly until she lowered her hand.

"You know, just for that, I won't show you the music room," he scolded. I shrugged. I think that bothered him even more, like I was reminding him it was his idea to drag me around the school, and that I'd barely agreed.

Pidge reached out to grasp the edge of Lance's jacket that still flopped open. She yanked him in the direction of the cafeteria. 

"Come on, Lance. I'm hungry."

They left me behind to find a shadowy corner. I was admittedly glad for the serenity at last, but I couldn't help but watch them walk away. Lance flailed around Pidge like he was a bug that Pidge kept around for her own peculiar enjoyment. He would walk sideways to see the reaction he got from her after every word, but consequently tripped over his own feet every few steps.

Pidge scrolled through her phone and nodded along, periodically adding something to the conversation.

I crunched up against the wall and ate my lunch as fast as possible. This new school was turning into more than I had bargained for.


	2. Chapter 2

I, Keith Kogane, hereby renounce any childish appreciation of the morning in order to see its true nature, a catastrophe. No, I'm not being dramatic, tell that to my alarm clock when it starts yelling. Nothing can be that urgent, especially consciousness.

Nevertheless, I awoke. At least it was Friday.

"Give me one good reason bacon can't be the main dish in every meal." I heard a familiar voice ramble, drunk and smooth from the morning haze.

Curtis had been there since before I showed up, even though he didn't technically live there. He just appeared every morning, stuck around throughout the day, and usually spent the night. It had been the same even before Shiro had officially adopted me, and I had a feeling it would be the same for at least a few more years.

"Because, darling, bacon isn't an entree. Ask the French." Shiro kissed Curtis on the cheek.

I entered the kitchen just in time to feign my disgust. Which was spot-on, if I do say so myself. Then again, I got a lot of practice.

"Ew, get a room," I mumbled.

"We're in a room," Curtis said cockily.

Shiro laughed at one of us, though I could never tell which, and passed me I heaping plate of breakfast. I had trained myself over years of foster care to only eat two meals a day. I would stash the third for later if I got one. Breakfast was usually my skip of choice, leaving me with little to no appetite in the mornings.

I ate it anyway because I knew it would make Shiro worry less throughout the day, and really, anything that reduced the speed of his deepening wrinkles was a blessing.

The hellish morning continued, you know, like an ungrateful demon, and I was an innocent bystander unwittingly punished. I watched myself in the mirror while somebody else combed through dark hair similar to my own and brushed a set of teeth with a matching chip where I fell on the pavement in elementary school. It seemed like a good idea to ride a skateboard and play jump rope at the same time back then.

Somebody chose my clothes. I can't be expected to achieve full awareness of my existence until I've been awake for at least an hour, so I couldn't tell you who had such questionable fashion sense.

My clueless hour ran up by the time I got into the passenger's seat of Shiro soccer mom van. Some days, I could still smell the ghosts of orange slices and hollow participation. I'd drive myself to school, if my car was finished, and if Shiro wasn't so consistently adamant about the family bonding time that happened in the rides to school. In my opinion, the fact that he and I have been working to refurbish that car since my social worker put me in his house should have qualified as a significant amount of bonding time, but I digress.

"How's your first week at Lincoln been?" Shiro asked.

"It's not over yet," I griped.

"Right, so how's it been so far?" he clarified without the slightest breath of agitation.

"Fine, I guess. It's school."

"Make any friends?" he pressed.

"You're being especially dadish today." I shifted in my seat so the seatbelt wasn't gouging my skin quite as aggressively as before.

"And you're being especially dickish. Just answer the question." He took his eyes off the road to shoot me a quick look. I sighed.

"Well, I haven't. Unless you count my counselor who insists everyone's her friend," I explained.

"Is it still Ms. Pilts?" Shiro laughed with a nostalgic sort of gleam in his eye.

"Yeah, she's ancient," I commented in recollection of the wiry old woman who was surprisingly strong for sitting at her desk all day.

"Are you calling me old?" Shiro clipped.

"As long as you keep acting like my dad..." I trailed off. He shoved my shoulder playfully and chuckled in that way he did that fluttered through his whole body.

"Fine, then you leave me no choice but to call you little brother from now on," he threatened, still laughing.

"Really, my name functions just fine. You're not going to wear it out."

Truthfully, I didn't bother me at all for him to call me his little brother, it was better than champ, but arguing with him like old friends was easier than painfully illustrating my lack of social life. I didn't need him worrying about that.

"I'm sorry, little brother, you give me no choice." He faked a moral struggle.

"You have a choice, you just want to annoy me, you twat."

"That too," he admitted easily. Then, I laughed.

The large metal spray paint riddle school sign rounded the corner. The trash floating through the parking lot rustled in the wind. Some idiot honked at a pedestrian who was glued to their phone. Shiro pulled up against a curb and parked the car with a click.

"See you after school, little brother," he teased and messed up my hair with his hand while I popped open the door.

I grumbled lightly and tried to straighten it out again. I didn't try very hard though. My hair was a mess anyways.

As I went through my morning classes in a rehearsed daze, sitting in corners, doodling in my notebook when the teacher blabbed about something I already knew, staying quiet, I simply waited for lunch to roll around. A tiny escape I was thankful for.

There was only one more class before I became reunited with the sandwich I packed that morning. It was probably squished, but it all went to the same place anyway.

Instead of sitting quietly at the back of the class, I soon realized I would have to share my table again. With Lance.

He chatted animatedly with Pidge about something he obviously found hilarious. When he laughed, people seemed to laugh with him. A girl at the table next to him smiled while she wrote something down in a notebook and shook her head. I took the long way to my table, so I wouldn't have to step over Lance's legs that stretched across the aisle between rows.

"Good afternoon, Keith," He greeted with a smile. I glanced at him but didn't respond.

Mr. Jenkins walked in the room and clicked the door shut behind him, grinning like a mad scientist on the brink of an experiment. I could visualize his gray hair standing on end while he used black rubber-gloved hands to yank a mysterious lever.

"Afternoon class," he cheered.

"Afternoon," they mumbled in various degrees of enthusiasm and washed politeness. I did not participate.

"You will not believe what I've achieved!" he continued, hoping he could bring up the energy. A few front-of-the-class-sitters leaned slightly forward in mild curiosity. I doodled a picture of Mr. Jenkins as a mad scientist with exciting news. His students laid in rows with probes attached to their heads.

I heard giggling to my right and saw that Lance was mimicking Mr. Jenkins with his own flare attached. The girl from before tried, and failed, to contain her amusement. She ducked her head so her face, turning redder by the second, was concealed by her long silvery hair.

"Shut up, Lance," she breathed in an accent I couldn't place.

"Oh come on Allura, I'm hilarious."

"You're an idiot, that's what you are. Would it kill you to pay attention?" she reprimanded.

Mr. Jenkins presented a field trip to a local Memorial site, maybe a graveyard, I couldn't be sure. It was hard to focus while sitting next to Lance. I managed to piece together that he was very excited about... dead people?

I added little gravestones etched with the names of a few classmates that came to mind toward the edge of my doodle.

"I don't know, I've never tested it. How was your summer?" Lance continued in a hushed tone.

I rested my head in the palm of my hand, and Allura gave in.

"It was pretty uneventful, how was yours?" she sighed.

"I'm so glad you asked, princess, I have quite the story to tell."

"Great," I grumbled. Lance didn't hear me, thank God, and jumped into a story about his summer.

He told how he'd spent it back in Cuba with his super extended family, everyone who hadn't yet made the move to populate the McClain family farm. Every time he started a sentence, he seemed to come up with a new name and a new outlandish experience they were a part of.

His sister, Veronica, made friends with a stray dog and tried to sneak him on the flight home. A flight attendant had to escort her off the plane until she let the poor dog go. 

A cousin of a cousin of an aunt or whatever had been working at a grocery store for the past few months, and Lance got to help out when he felt like it. Allura laughed at the prospect of Lance holding a steady job, figures he had to know someone there.

My favorite story I overheard, not eavesdropped, was the story of the boat his family had down there. One of the younger cousins had accidentally dropped an action figure off the edge, and they went diving for it with crappy flashlights and fishing rods. They spent hours out on the water as the sun fell low, and his description of the ocean at twilight led me to draw it in the corner of my notebook under Mad Scientist Jenkins before I realized what I was doing. He oggled in memory of the stars. 

I imagined what it would be like to spend the night out at sea with dozens of birthright friends.

"How about you, Keith? What did you do over the summer?" His voice sounded immensely sharper once it was aimed at me.

I sketched another line on my half-hazard doodle. Then, somewhere in the depths of my brain, a tiny voice reminded me of the polite thing to do when asked a question. Answer. I moved the notebook to the side and shield it under one of my elbows.

Lance waited patiently while Allura refocused back on her work. The words stumbled in my brain, desperately searching for a sufficient response. Not a single solid memory surfaced in my mind, only fuzzy ideas of what it felt like and first draft color palettes.

I shrugged.

"There's gotta be something interesting you did." He flopped forward on the surface of the table. He hadn't even bothered to take anything out of his bag to work on.

"Not really." I Shrugged again and turned away, hoping he would get the hint and divert his attention away, go back to pestering Allura, beg Pidge for help in whatever class he wanted. He didn't. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised.

"Seriously? Okay, so you're either lying to me because you're antisocial and stuck in your weird fantasy world where mullets are still cool, or you actually did nothing for three months, and I honestly can't decide which is more depressing," he rambled so quietly I had to read his lips for half of the speech, so it was a good thing he enunciated words with his entire body.

"I don't have a mullet," I blurted and immediately glanced around to see if anyone had heard.

Lance crinkled his nose and smirked in hilarious disagreement.

"Then what do you call it?"

"Hair," I hissed.

"I have a call for you." He held his hand up in the shape of a cell phone. "Hello? Yeah, it's the 80s. They want their mullet back."

I rolled my eyes so hard they ached and pushed my back flat against the seat. Somewhere, in another class, there was a seat where I could exist in peace. I stared toward the front of the class to test my teleportation powers. If you can see it, you can be it.

"So, mullet, what to do over the summer." Lance mimicked my posture so his shoulders and hips were squared toward the front of the class as well. Sitting like this, I could see that I was actually slightly taller than him, and I would be standing as well if he didn't answer freakishly long limbs.

I shrugged.

He watched me openly, gaping at the side of my face that I refused to take from the front of the class, doing that thing with his eyebrow which was even stranger from the corner of my vision. I wouldn't let him win, so I clicked my pen on again, and I pretended to take notes. He scoffed and I almost gave in to whatever game we were playing.

"Allura, psst, Allura," he whispered. 

"What do you want, Lance? Some of us are trying to pass this class," Allura responded reluctantly.

"I need you to tell Emo Dude to answer me."

"Maybe you should ask yourself." She turned back to her notes and highlighted something in orange. Her notebook was neatly organized with a vast array of different neon shades. It put my blue and black randomness, collaged from orphaned writing utensils, to shame.

"I tried that," Lance explained, and I could feel the air shift where he gestured his arm toward me like my existence was evidence enough. 

"Well, then you should consider the possibility that he just doesn't want to talk to you." She bit her words so each syllable cut off as soon as possible to make room for the next.

"That's why I need you. Cause maybe he'll answer to a pretty girl," he lulled suggestively. 

I knew where this was going, so I felt it was time to forfeit.

I sighed, "I'm gay, Lance."

In hindsight, I should've expected an overly dramatic reaction from Lance, but I'd really hoped it wouldn't be quite so broad. 

The chair underneath him squeaked abruptly against the floor tiles when he spun to face me. Both of his eyebrows were raised in shock. Could he really be that surprised?

"You, what?" he said in what was, for the first time since class had begun, his normal talking voice. I'd startled him out of his consistently practiced silence. 

Mr. Jenkins paused his explanation of the project surrounding the book he assigned, something about  _Plagiarize and die a most painful death._ He peered toward the back of the class where many of the students were also admiring the view. Allura was rolling her eyes toward the sky and mumbling something under her breath, a wish, an apology, a prayer. It included a lot of phrases with "idiot" and "Lance" stacked next to each other. Pidge snickered like a benevolent fate-maker a few rows ahead, just our of the blast zone. I still had my pen in my hand which, for whatever reason, felt like a mini-personal shield. I'd been working, here's proof. Lance didn't mind the pressure of all the eyes trained on him if he even noticed. 

"Since when?" he squeaked. 

Somebody sitting in the row in front of us whispered to their seatmate and they chuckled. Mr. Jenks crossed his arms over his chest and frowned.

"Is there something you two want to share with the class?" A broad-shouldered girl with a french braid ooed.

"No, I think we'll pass. How does that sound for you, Keith?" I glared at him and clenched my jaw to bite back the onslaught of insult I wished to hurl at him. 

"Are you sure? If it was important enough to interrupt my class, we might be able to ease some of the tension with community deliberation." I internally winced at the thought of Mr. Jenkins's fourth hour English discussing my sexuality. 

"Are you sure you want to know, Mr. J-Man?" Lance pressed, dripping with innuendo and punctuated with a wag of his eyebrow. He smirked devilishly, and I remained surprisingly level-headed. I was sure I'd break.

"I-" Mr. Jenkins took a long breath. "Take a walk, Lance."

"Yes, sir." He stood from his chair and gathered his things before weaving through the tables. On his way out the door, he faced me. I wished he'd just turn and walk away like a normal person, but he had other plans.

With no reason whatsoever, he gave me finger guns and a wink, pretending we were in on the whole thing together like a very twisted team. He didn't return to class that day.

 


	3. Chapter 3

I could lie and tell you I got used to Lance's oddities, the way he always was the center of attention and somehow never felt the heat of the spotlight, but I won't. The truth was, every day became an unwitting adventure. Fourth hour English class became my quest screen, and I still found it weird when Lance just _appeared_ places like some sort of weird spawn feature.

It had only been two weeks, and he had already gotten more confessions out of me than a very experienced detective. I didn't trust detectives.

Every few lunches, he'd be there, but not today. Today I let myself believe I was eating my sandwich in a long-awaited comfortable silence. One of these days, I'd learn to stop doing that.

"Hey, are you Keith?" called a guy with a wide stance and an awkward smile. I glanced from side to side down the hall like there was someone else he could be referring to, some other kid eating his lunch on the floor.

"Uh...yeah?"

"Sweet. I'm Hunk." He sat down next to me without further explanation. I remembered vaguely Lance whispering about a guy named Hunk a few days ago. I wasn't eavesdropping.

I scooched my legs, so I wouldn't be so close to this friend of Lance.

"What do you want?" I grumbled and folded my notebook to the side, refusing him the courtesy of eye contact.

"Lance is failing English," he explained.

"No, shit."

"He wants you to help him study."

"Then he can ask me himself in class, or get Allura to help him. Her notes are better than mine anyway," I brushed.

"He's not good at asking for help."

I crossed my arms and tilted my head back, so I was examining the ceiling tiles. This school was broke as shit if it couldn't afford to pay for a functioning roof. Half of the tiles were missing, and the existing ones probably used to be white but were so layered in dust and mold it was impossible to tell.

"Plus, Allura already said no," he confessed. "Something about how he should listen to what the teacher is saying and maybe he could learn a thing or two."

I was tempted to say the same thing, maybe flip this guy the bird even if he seemed pretty nice. The refusal balanced on the tip of my tongue when the bell rang for everyone to go to class. As I hoisted my bag onto my shoulders, I completely forgot that a lingering question hovered for me to tend to.

"So?" Hunk reminded me. It would've been so easy to turn him down. It wasn't like it would've been the first time I've told a perfectly nice person to fuck off, but I couldn't.

"...Yeah, fine," I agreed like an absolute pushover.

I mean, it could only be so bad...right?

***

I met him in the library after school as directed by the worst game of telephone since the Japan fiasco, and that tragedy ended in the wrongful naming of an entire country and its people. Whoever was supposed to give me the message didn't show up. Instead, someone else asked if I understood, and when I responded in confusion, told me about the plan to meet in an empty swimming pool. That didn't sound right, so I began the ever-so-obnoxious task of tracing the telephone back to the source. Lance, who was sitting in the library complaining that I ended up late.

The study date hadn't even started, and I wanted to punch him in the face.

"Finally, you're here. How long does it take to walk across the school?" he grumbled.

"Pretty long if you have no idea where you're going. Thanks for telling me by the way, really efficient."

He pushed aside his stuff, so I could join him at the table he chose. It was way in the far back of the library behind rows of bookshelves. The only light came from the sun outside since the few working fluorescent bulbs were shadowed by the reference section.

"Didn't Ricky get you the message?"

"Nope," I dismissed. The horrid adventure had finally ended, so the last thing I wanted to do was relay it back in the painstaking detail Lance inevitably required.

"Well, that's hardly my fault. My plan was foolproof," he bragged with the emphasis of his waving hands.

"Your plan met its fool capacity the second it came from you. Here are my notes." I slapped the stack of sheets down in front of him before he could decide whether he was offended or not.

The noise distracted him enough to move on and start flipping through the pages that I selected. The ones that were actually about the class, that were actually legible and that didn't illustrate anybody's murder. It was really depressing to see how few pages met those criteria.

Lance didn't read any of them. Don't get me wrong, he pretended to. He glanced them up and down and flitted his eyes over the words, but I could tell he wasn't actually digesting any of the words. His thoughts were elsewhere.

I sat there awkwardly, pretending as well that he was actually reading the notes. I picked at a cuticle that grew unevenly.

"This doesn't make sense," Lance blurted, at last.

"How would you know, it's not like you're actually reading it." I sat back farther in my chair as if it would somehow make the entire experience less painful.

"I'm trying, shut up. Your handwriting is a gift from the chicken devil," he groaned, sounding genuinely frustrated.

" _That_ doesn't make any sense."

He faced me with his lips flattened into a thin line.

"Fine. You read it," he challenged. The tilt in his head and his tone gave away how proud he was of coming up with the horrible solution.

"Me?"

"Who else would I be talking to?"

"You want me to read you my notes?"

"Yes," he sighed. "It's not like anyone's around, and I'm really shit at reading. Unless you don't want to..."

I paused with my mouth slightly open, ready to object, but I didn't. For some reason. It would've been so easy to tell him where he could shove it and go home, where Shiro was undoubtedly making grilled cheese sandwiches.

For some reason, I rolled my eyes and snatched the admittedly messy notes from Lance before he could finish his objection. I began to mumble the words out hastily, each one a weird flashback to when I had actually written it down.

After about half a page, Lance stopped me.

"Say that again, but slower." His voice sounded focused, so I looked over to see that he was rewriting every single word I was saying on his own sheet of paper. His handwriting was much neater, boxier, more deliberate. To be honest, it was a lot prettier than mine. He wrote with his left hand which smeared some of the letters, but not beyond recognition.

"Uh-um." I cleared my throat to find my spot on the page again. "Prepositional phrases describe how to nouns relate to each other in space," I repeated without mumbling as carelessly as before.

Lance furrowed his eyebrow and lightly mouthed the word "prepositional" like he was trying to feel the letters as he formed them. I watched him butcher the spelling, erase it, and butcher it again before I gave him mercy.

"P-R-E-P-O-S-I-T-I-O-N-A-L."

His hand followed the letters as they came out of my mouth, and they had never looked so legible on a paper.

"Keep going, mullet. We aren't waiting for paint to dry." He waved his hand Lanceishly which I've decided is a synonym for dramatically, and I pretending not to hear his new nickname for me. 

Somewhere over the course of reading my notes to Lance, I moved on from the weirdness of it, the way my voice scratched, begging for water, and even having to stop every few moments to spell a word to him, but I couldn't get over how effortlessly perfect his notes were. Was it really so hard for him to take those in class like everyone else?

I kept reading, and my voice got even scratchier. You'd think reading out loud would be an easy task, but after the second page, I was dying. I moved on from that as well. There were only a few more pages left.

At some point, Lance retrieved a set of highlighters from his bag and started coloring the words as he wrote them. I subconsciously slowed down my speech when he did to give him more time to organize his thoughts on the page. I kept reading about another weird grammar rule that made absolutely no sense. English really needed to get its shit together.

When I finished the pages in front of me, Lance lifted his head from his notes, word for word what I had said. 

"Why'd you stop?" he wondered. 

"Uh, that's it. That's all the notes I have." 

He grabbed the stack of papers from me and flipped through them as if I could've missed a dozen pages reading through them myself. 

"No way, you're always writing down stuff during class where does it all go?"

"I'm not always writing notes, so that's it, sorry," I explained with a weak shrug. 

"What are you doing then?" He raised an eyebrow which I glared at pointedly. "Okay, can you just read these ones again?" He handed me back the stack that was getting wrinkled and tired by now. 

I widened my eyes at him while he turned the page in his notebook to a blank and fresh one. 

"You want me to read these notes to you all over again?" My voice scratched as if to express the pain that had developed from the first time through. Something in my tone made Lance check himself and he suddenly became very apologetic. 

"I mean, you don't have to, I can just read over what I have again or make some flashcards. Maybe Pidge will give in and help me-"

"Forget it, just hold on while I get something to drink," I conceded, for some reason. I fully intended on going to the water fountain down the hall, but Lance grabbed my shoulder before I could get up to leave. I stared at the hand on my shoulder as it stayed there while Lance pulled something from his bag. 

With a clunk, he set a bottle of a red-tinted liquid on the table. In the quiet of the library, it sounded much louder than it actually was. 

"No need." His hand fell from my shoulder and flopped onto the table. "Say hello to Lance's Magical Study Potion," he announced.

"Oh no," I breathed, a sudden wave of fear coursing through me. Who knows what would be in that bottle. I glanced away from him and started to get up anyway, insisting that water would do just fine. It wasn't that far away. 

"Wait, I promise it's not poisonous. It's just kool-aid, orange juice, sprite, some red bull, and a secret ingredient." He twisted the bottle around in his hands like shining the light through it would expose each ingredient for him to recite. 

"Is that secret ingredient going to kill me?"

"No, of course not!" he gasped. "You know, most likely..." 

I rolled my eyes so hard it pulled my head with it, and I wound my arms around my chest. He unwound the top of the bottle ceremoniously. It bounced up and down on its plastic connector. 

With one hand, Lance wafted imaginary fumes under my nose. He waggled his eyebrows convincingly. Why was I convinced? I forced my eyes away from him, but they quickly flicked back. 

Lance was smirking like a demon, and he knew he was winning. 

"Why am I agreeing to this?" I sighed. Lance would've cheered if we weren't in a library. I guarantee that. 

He had dixie cups in his bag covered in little tiny daisies, as you do, and he filled two of the side by side like child-branded shot glasses. Lance took his cup with a poised pinkie finger, but I waited to sniff mine and see if my nose could decipher any toxicity. I smelled mostly kool-aid, so I downed it before the overthinking part of my brain invented the overwhelming scent of death.

"And?" Lance poured himself another cup of the weird drink. 

"And that's number one on the list of most horrible things that have been in my mouth. Pour me another." 

He didn't hesitate in obliging, and soon, we had finished the entire bottle, studying abandoned ruthlessly. Our seats sat pulled far away from the table, and we had conceded to the floor against the bookshelves passing the notepaper back and forth, reading it aloud and spelling the English butchered words. I hate to admit it, but the Study Potion seemed to actually work. Something about the combination of high caffeine and extreme sugar blended together in a bubbly mixture made your brain spin so quickly information begged to be stored. 

The trouble was staying focused in a world of distractions, in a corner with no supervision. Nevertheless, I probably read through those note pages three more times while Lance re-wrote them just as diligently as before. After the second read through, he stopped apologizing for needing help, and I stopped pretending I didn't want to help him. 

Then a brighter and familiarly sarcastic tone called from somewhere behind the rows of books. 

"Lance! Lance, where are you?" the voice repeated as loud as they could get away with in a library after school, otherwise the ghosts might get frightened. 

A tall girl with the same burnt toaster hair and hazelnut skin as Lance rounded the corner. She dragged her feet to a stop and stared at the sky to gather her annoyance and bury it down low. 

"There you are. I called you twice, you dimwit!" she hissed, stomping down to where Lance and I were sitting opposite each other. 

"Well, my phone didn't ring, you equally large dimwit." He gathered his pages and shoved them into his bag so aggressively they crinkled under the pressure. I pulled my things together as well since I should've probably been gone a while ago too. 

"Whatever, mom wants us to stop and get more milk." She regarded me as if for the first time noticing that I was there. "Hi, I'm Veronica." 

I stared at her outstretched hand like some alien who was still trying to learn Earth's strange customs. I shook it like I was guessing. 

"I, um, I'm Keith," I stuttered. 

"Well, Keith. Congrats for putting up with my idiot brother for two and a half hours without murdering him. I commend your bravery," she joked with a sarcasm that I knew how to respond to. Sarcasm was my home. 

"It wasn't easy. I really owe it to my self-loathing for letting me believe I deserved the pain."

"Oh my God, Lance. Can we keep him?" she laughed with a full-toothed grin spread across her face. 

Lance's eyes sparkled when he laughed, but the librarian didn't seem to care when we passed her on our way out. She peered over her half-moon glasses and traced our footsteps with her prodding eyes. 

I walked with them all the way to the car that had missed the memo at some point about not parking on the sidewalk while listening to their childish banter. In some ways, they reminded me of Shiro and me, as if we were actually brothers. I even let myself insert a joke or two into the conversation. 

They sped away just as carelessly as the vehicle had been parked. 

"Hey, Shiro. Yeah, I'm still at the school. Could you come and pick me up? Thanks."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes it just takes a graveyard to make someone feel like they're finally fitting in. 
> 
> Sorry for anyone who was reading this and had to deal with my impromptu hiatus. I can't promise it won't happen again, but I'll do my best. Enjoy!

Mr. Jenkins was the only teacher that could get away with taking a group of seniors to the graveyard and calling it an “educational activity”. This was partly because he spoke in a way that made everyone want him to stop, so they would agree to his rambles, and partly because he had a lot of credit built up from keeping the coffee pot filled in the teacher’s lounge. 

I spent way too long the night before persuading Shiro that taking me to school a half hour earlier wasn’t that big of a deal, but he ended up giving me the ride anyway. 

After all of that, I ended up being the first one there and gladly chose the seat in the very back of the bus away from the scrutinous eye of the bus driver and Mr. Jenkins. Maybe I would take a nap. The possibilities were endless. 

I didn’t take a nap. 

Pidge had the same idea when it came to seating arrangements and rounded the corner into the bus with eyes of determination. She took the seat across the aisle from me that was slightly smaller to make room for the back wheel and the emergency exit. 

“Look who it is,” she chirped. “Keith Kogane, the guy who got roped into tutoring the untutorable.” Something in her backpack made a clanking sound when she dropped it at her feet. 

I didn’t humor her with a response. 

She scooched to the edge of her seat so her short person legs could stretch all the way across the aisle into my seat. 

“Consider this reserved,” she announced and adjusted her laptop on her lap. 

Now, who could she be reserving that seat for? I made a wild guess. 

“Come on. What do I have to do for some peace and quiet around here?” I groaned. 

Pidge didn’t look up when she responded in a surprisingly casual tone, “Murder.”

“I’m in. Will you help me hide the body?”

“Ten bucks and you have a deal,” she agreed with a smirk, her glasses reflecting the light from her screen and hiding most of the amused expression in her eyes. 

I waited for the silence to grow comfortable before pulling out a notebook. Even if I couldn’t take a nap, I could still mindlessly doodle. 

Students started trickling in to fill the seats. Clumps of chaotic noises and large movements shaded each seat on the bus. Some of them sat backward with their arms draped over the seats so they could talk to whoever was in the seat behind them. My silence was slowly stolen from me. 

By the time Lance showed up to claim his seat, it was already gone. Today, he didn’t have the pleasure of ruining it himself. 

“Wow, Pidge, I didn’t think your legs were long enough to go all the way across the aisle,” he mocked. 

“Wow, Lance, I didn’t think a single person could contain so much idiocy without exploding.”

“Well, okay then.” He swiped her legs off of the seat and flopped down right next to me. He had yet to acknowledge my existence, and I was secretly hoping he would do it soon. Just to get it over with. 

Allura settled into the seat in front of Pidge, leaning forward in a way that only she could make look graceful. 

“How much do you want to bet Eric Dawson’s going to get banned from the cemetery today?” she chided with a joking smile. Pidge perked up and gazed toward the front where he was sitting as if assessing the percentage of idiot he was today. 

“Five bucks says he has to apologize to management,” she proposed.

Allura paused, “The five is mine if he has to leave.” They shook on it and moved on like making random bets was a natural part of their life and no further pomp or circumstance was needed to commemorate the occasion. 

“Good morning, Keith,” Allura greeted toward me just as I had begun to drown out the noise. 

I started slightly, and my brain couldn’t come up with an answer quick enough. I gave her an awkward nod to compensate, and it was that movement that sucked me into their weird conversations for the rest of the bus ride. 

“How much money would you put on Eric’s idiocy today?” Lance wondered like he was trying to start a conversation. 

“I don’t make bets,” I answered. 

He sat back in his seat abruptly and gaped at me. Had I just offended him? 

“What? It just doesn’t make sense to me. I always lose, so it’s a waste of money, I mean, just logically speaking and stuff…” I trailed off when Pidge started to laugh at me. 

Lance shook his head at me with disappointment weighing down on his face. 

“I didn’t peg you for a responsible adult,” Pidge added. 

“Yeah, seems like you’re full of surprises,” Lance grumbled. He flopped all the way back into his seat and focused toward the front while I tried to decipher what he’d meant by that. 

Was I being rude?

“Whatever, I guess it makes sense if you’re just a natural loser,” he went on. I ignored him and continued the conversation with simply an eye roll at his immaturity. Allura and I discussed English class. All was well. 

Or at least that’s what I wish I’d done. That would’ve been a hell of a lot more intelligent, and it certainly wouldn’t have gotten me to where I was after I made the exact opposite decision. 

What did happen, much to my sanity’s dismay, was something inexplicable. A tingle, or a spark of fury tickled my soul. The natural response when you’re tickled is to kick back. Hard.

“Natural loser.” I let the words marinate on my tongue. “Huh, well, congrats I guess. You finally found something we have in common.” 

The look on his face was worth shooting my own foot over. I could’ve sworn I heard Pidge snort too, which was an accomplishment of its own. He reeled and leaned the way he always did to prepare a comeback, like the words had to be sucked up from his toes.

“Okay, but you just agreed with me though...so you’re a loser,” he reasoned.

“I also called you a loser, but it would take more than one braincell to detect that much information in a sentence so I can’t fault you for that.” 

Friends. I’ll take this moment to ask you a simple question, one that I couldn’t seem to get myself to ponder here, why won’t I just shut the fuck up? I’ll blame it on Lance’s extreme talent at pushing my buttons.

“Right, so you’re going to continue to pretend that you didn’t screw up and call yourself a loser so that you can desperately try to win this argument.”

“This is an argument? I thought we were in agreement,” I said in mock innocence. He seethed with a small amount of restriction that I thought he hoped was enough for me not to notice. I barely contained my laughter and had to press my lips together to withhold it. 

“Ohh, you think you’re so funny, do you?” How’d he know? 

“Not particularly.”

“Whatever, loser.”

“At least I’ve learned to cope with my impairment,” I bit right back. I wished I had present tense hindsight, but I was pretty sure they just called that common sense and that was super expensive.

“Oh you do, do you?” I scoff. “Prove it.” 

I looked right at him then. Into his blue eyes. They’ were firey with competition and boredom all at once. His face was as expressive as a cartoon. Now I was in this though, and I couldn’t back down from a direct challenge…

“Twenty bucks says he gets detention for a week.”

“And I’ll put my twenty on his ability to have his friends take the fall.” He held out a hand to shake. I took it in my own and couldn’t help but notice how long his fingers were. They flopped around with the rest of him as soon as he let go. 

I forced myself not to notice the sudden cold his hand left behind. 

As a consequence of that task, I couldn’t tell you much of what happened the rest of the ride to the graveyard. It was only twenty minutes, that’s not enough to be pathetic. I did feel the toggle of the gravel when we pulled into the poorly maintained road, talk about disrespect for the dead. 

We piled off the vehicle in a disorderly fashion and awaited our directions. Instead, a small framed man with too much face frowned at us happily. Understand that the excess face was what made him frown and not his emotions towards us. His eyes gave him away, buried under a pair of large glasses. In contrast, he did not have quite enough torso or arm. His skin was ghosty but got darker in every fold where smiles had fallen. 

He began to speak. Nobody listened. He didn’t have any bitchiness whatsoever, a trait required for communicating with high schoolers of any breed. 

“Hey, kids, listen to your guide. He is donating his freetime to be here with you guys and make sure you have a great experience learning about the people here,” he scratched in a familiar way, and the class quieted to make him stop.

“Thank you.” His voice stumbled and crackled like he was talking around a snail lodged in his throat. “Now, I’m Mr. Geif, I don’t expect any of you to remember that because you should save the space to hold the final resting places of our town’s finest. I tell ya, some of them were quite the characters.” The students followed his beckoning hand, shuffling to match his leisurely pace. 

Pidge’s steps were the only ones that matched the guide’s fairly consistently, and Lance couldn’t help but comment on that in the overzealous way that he lives by, so they were fighting. Allura was watching Eric Dawson like a hungry mama hawk, five dollars on her mind. Eric, however, was only mocking the guide to his friends poorly. I could’ve done a much better impression, he was more hunched toward the sky than the ground, but who’s counting?

It was the perfect moment for me to slip away unnoticed. 

I waited for it to be spoiled the moment I found a bench to perch on. The wood planks shifted and wobbled with a new weight. At least I was learning. 

What I was not prepared for was the fact that it was a certain white haired woman who always highlighted her notes. 

“Do you want a Snickers bar?” she wondered. In her hand she held a king size bar, and I stuttered my acceptance.

“I-uh, sure, I guess.” 

She grinned.

I pushed the bar into my jacket pocket for later and watched the class slowly vanish over a hill. Slowly, the guide was not fast.

“How long before they notice we’re gone do you think?” I asked Allura and she looked up from her phone that she had begun to scroll through with an unreadable expression on her face. 

“I give Lance five minutes, Pidge already knows. She just doesn’t care.”

“That sounds like an accurate analysis.”

“When you’ve been dealing with them for as long as I have, you learn some patterns.” I stayed silent and watched the side of her face, all careful curves and sharp rises. If you let an unanswered silence sit, people tend to fill it, that’s how Shiro always explained why people would open up to me. I never filled silences. “I met Lance just before middle school, you know,” she started as if I had prior knowledge on the matter. “It was spring. Really spring, not muddy and gross, just about to be summer. I’d seen him around since we lived in the same area, but I’d never talked to him. I only remembered him at all because he has a habit of being remembered.”

She paused and took a breath. It occured to me that this was a story she needed to tell. Sbe was glad to stare forward over the stone-spiked hill and fill the silence.

“He just waltzed right up to my door and handed me this gorgeous red rose. It had a blue ribbon securing a plastic bag to the stem and the thorns were terribly sharp. He smiled and told me that his mother grew roses every year from the same seeds and gave them to everyone in her family. He asked me if I wanted to be part of his family now, perks were roses and way too much food all of the time. I accepted, and he ran to the next house to deliver his speech with a wagon of roses. And I’ve been putting up with their shit ever since,” she chuckled. 

I thought about that. About how very Lance that seemed. About how I now had a definition for what Lance meant, but think of the devil and he shall appear. It seemed Allura was right on the mark when she guessed five minutes because the two came peeking over the hill not long after, scanning for their missing noise.

“Finally! How dare you leave me unsupervised, you had me plotting absurd things, unspeakable things,” Pidge ranted seriously with a suggestive tone. There were only so many unspeakable things you could do in a graveyard, and I caught the drift that Pidge wasn’t interested in doing the majority of my list. 

“The teacher doesn’t count as supervision?” Allura suggested. 

“No! If anything he’s encouragement, have you heard the way he speaks? God, one of these days...scotch tape and a button maker, that’s all I’m going to say.”

“That’s an interesting approach, just to clarify, the non-battery powered button makers?” Lance asked with a level of understanding that was appalling.

“Of course, how would I use a battery powered one? I’m not insane.”

Allura pointed her eyes directly into mine at that. The twitch of her jewel toned irises screamed for release., and maybe I would’ve given it to her one way or another if I’d had the liberty of sleeping in later or having that second cup of coffee, but alas. 

“At least take a video,” I requested. Allura’s face dropped in betrayal, and she mocked pulling a knife out of her back. 

***

For those of you that care: 

Eric Dawson had a serious talking to from Mr. Jenkins, and he was given a week and a half of good old fashioned detention. For peeing in the bushes and writing his name on the back of a gravestone, he was forced to write a letter to the family of the deceased and graveyard maintenance staff apologizing for the disturbance. He, in fact, was not smart enough to get his friends to take the fall. They have their own punishments. 

Pidge received five dollars for Eric apologizing to management. Keith’s twenty is still up for debate. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew gets detention and Keith is called over to Lance's house where he meets many a sister, but only one brother.

Detention. Yeah. I got that. 

It was the day after our lovely stroll over bodies in various levels of worship and decay, I was sitting in that English class that had become the hub of everything worth mentioning in my life, minding my own business. Pidge had been passing notes to me all class, through Allura and Lance, about an intro to engineering class we were both taking. I had it before she did, so she was trying to pry information out of me about the most recent test. After growing tired of resisting, I gave her what I remembered, and that turned out to be the time that Lance commented on the notes.

“Do you two need to get a room?” he laughed. Allura glared at him.

“Are you forgetting something?” she pestered. I knew where this was going, but like a squirrel watching a snowball grow closer, there was nothing I could do to stop it.

“What?” 

“Pidge is anything but straight, and the same goes for Keith. If you’re going to make jokes at least make them accurate,” she hissed. 

“Can we not discuss my sexuality again? It would be greatly appreciated.” I scribbled down my answer to Pidge’s latest question while Allura chastised Lance for chastising her and they gradually grew louder in the back of the class. I reached over Lance’s three quarters of the desk to fast track the letter to Pidge, Pidge flipped Lance off for something he had said that I couldn’t pay attention to because he was suddenly _right there,_ and Allura was using very large words to call Lance very small. It was that moment that Mr. Jenkins decided to glance back at us.

Now, I had detention. For sharing test information, for being loud, for being stupid, for being Lance’s colatoral damage. I wasn’t happy about it.  Surprisingly enough, being glued to a seat in the middle of a lecture hall that smelled like wet carpet, getting berated by a scratchy woman who had volunteered to supervise hell and being late to come home wasn’t my idea of a fun time. 

Only four minutes had passed, and the occupants were all silently waiting for the supervisor to leave. She always did. Not that I would know or anything, Lance was the one who broke my no detentions record. I am not a smartass…

Somebody coughed to my left and it rang out awkwardly. People shifted. The woman pulled her bifocals down her long nose to peer over them accusingly. Nobody said a word. She stood.

“Students, I’ll be leaving you to go let my Mugsy out of her crate, I’ll be back. Unless you want any more detentions, you will stay exactly as you are.” Her eyes roamed as if she could look hard enough and see through the falsehood in our head nods and the sarcasm in our yes ma’ams. She walked out with a small amount of hesitation. 

Three, two, one. Chairs scraped against the staggered lecture space, feet stomped up and down the risers, and the air sighed in relief. 

“Where’s Acxa?” called the opinionated girl I’d come to recognize as Ezor. She was met with a variety of shrugs and hums. 

“I heard she got out of it this time,” Lotor insinuated. He propped his feet up on a chair in front of him and flipped his hair over both shoulders in a way he couldn’t have possibly thought was appealing. I turned before I punched him. 

The idiots that were responsible for getting me here this time were all still sitting in their seats, watching the chaos unfold around them of high school’s best and brightest left unsupervised. 

Eric Dawson walked the teacher’s table up to the top of the risers. 

I wandered to where she had made us stash our backpacks and fished around for something to do. Pidge joined me there soon after to retrieve her laptop.

“If I didn’t know any better I’d say this wasn’t your first time locked in the lecture hall afterschool.” She smirked.

“Only once or twice.” She lifted her eyebrows. “Nine or ten times, but that’s not even that many.”

“You’ve been at this school for a month and a half, that’s 45 days. What is that, like 22 percent of your days?”

“Nerd.”

“I’m right though, what are you a secret asshole?” she joked when I tried to turn away.

“I just don’t see the point in following a rule that can’t be defended,” I mumbled. That was something Shiro got on me for. The rule doesn’t have to make sense, he’d say, just put your head down and get through it. Be patient. Patience yields focus. Blah, bla-blah.

“Oh my fuck, you’re a secret smartass. Lance always picks the interesting ones…” she trailed off.

“I’m not a smartass,” I corrected her once I stopped understanding her train of thought.

“No, you’re a _secret_ smartass.” I decided I could live with that. 

We arrived back to where Allura’s seat had been assigned to find Lance behind her, braiding her hair. He chewed his bottom lip in concentration as he hummed an unfamiliar lilting tune. His fingers marched along, twisting through her hair in a practiced symphony.

Allura’s arms were crossed over her chest and her eyes were closed. Something about it said ‘this is every day for me, I might as well get comfortable’. I put a seat between me and them while Pidge moved one around to perch on with her laptop. The keys began clicking rapidly underneath her fingers. 

Eric Dawson positioned the table at an angle with the stairs, legs pointing towards the ceiling and a rope tied to the front end. 

I could only guess what his brilliant plan was and took to drawing in between the lines of my math notebook, engorging the details that I found most hilarious. Eric’s nose stuck up in the air, the table cried underneath him, the ground squished his face when he face planted. His ideas usually ended up in face planting. I sketched his friends taking the video and Lotor sitting just behind with his eyebrow lifted in superiority. Not moments later, the scene unfolded as I’d predicted. 

Eric Dawson mounted the table, and his weight sent it sliding briskly down the stairs until the rope he was using to hold on fell loose and caught underneath. He flew forward and stumbled to the ground. His face slapping the linoleum tile. 

Allura sat up straight at the sudden noise and yanked on the masterpiece Lance had been creating with his fingers. He sputtered his discontent.

“Hey! I have to tie it off first.” Allura passed him a hair tie and he grappled to get around the last piece of hair.

“Is he okay?” she wondered. Eric groaned from his spot on the floor. I shrugged. Ezor slapped a few bills into Zethrid’s outstretched hand. Pidge’s keyboard continued to clack. 

“What?” Lance asked, finally glancing up from his work and staring around the room that had been picked apart ruthlessly since the last time he had seen it. 

The table sat flipped over at an odd angle halfway through its predicted journey. The supply closet door was wide open and many of the supplies were being used to make paper snowflakes or draw dicks on the desks. I don’t know who figured out how to unlock the door without the set of keys Acxa usually brought with her, but somebody must’ve figured it out. Lotor was brushing his hair while gazing into a very old hand mirror, someone was playing the kazoo, and there were no longer rows to the chairs, but that seemed like a mild concern in comparison. 

“I hate to break it to you buddy, but looking in that mirror for so long isn’t going to make your reflection fall for you,” teased Lance. 

“That’s not what I’m doing you absolute dimwit,” he growled in response across the expanse between them. 

“Oh really, I could’ve sworn you were eyefucking your own hair. Don’t be shy. I support you.” He smiled. “Some of us just can’t get anyone else to do it for us, so you do what you gotta do. No judgement,” he nearly spat the last words out of his mouth to make sure Lotor got whatever else was hidden inside his phrasing. 

Lotor laughed in contempt. 

“Well I hope it does something for you then,” he started, his gaze shifted slightly. “Unless getting your hair braided by a loud mouthed waste of energy was enough, but I doubt it.” I felt the air change. 

He had said something forbidden.

He had directed it at Allura. 

Lance was standing. 

Allura hadn’t moved, hadn’t changed anything but her tone and her eyes. They were still like a lioness watching its dinner still walking, knowing its clock had run our before it could ever guess. 

“Lance. Sit,” she spoke as clear and definite as a diplomat who intends to win. She stood, she moved, she slapped Lotor across the face. 

“Oh, shit,” random friend of Eric #2 gasped as the crisp sound bounced off the walls of the lecture hall. 

“Talk to me again and I accept your father’s invitation to dinner.”

Lotor caressed the mark on his face that was becoming more pronounced by the second. Allura sat back down in her seat and clicked her phone on, positioning it to take a picture of the eccentric hairdo Lance had created. It was really something else. 

“Nicely done, princess,” Lance said, all malice from before fading. 

“Just doing God’s work,” she sighed. 

I blinked at the interaction and began to understand. Lance’s eyelashes fluttering around his eyes, swimming with care, protectiveness, and a little bit of pride, he loved her. He grinned and helped her get a good angle for the photo. While they easily moved in and out of each other’s personal space bubbles as if they shared one, I went back to my notebook. This time I would make one to immortalize the look of shock on Lotor’s face when he was shoved down a couple notches. Allura was right. That was God’s work. 

Pidge, who had remained arched around her laptop for the entirety of this endeavor, pushed up her glasses and went to speak. 

“Did you know that Keith is a secret smartass?” she said. Both Lance and Allura stopped playing with filters and captions to look at me. 

“She’s making things up,” I tell them. 

“No, I see it. The way he glares at everyone, thinking he’s all cool and shit, he probably thinks rules are stupid, so he has nothing else to do but to mock them. Unlike me, I just pretend they don’t exist all together, it’s a lot less stressful that way, and I don’t need to tell you the effects of stress on the mind, body, and spirit. You could get worry lines, and that would just put all my hard work to waste,” he explained. With my eyebrows furrowed in question, I watched him gesture over Allura’s shoulders, flopping so that his chin came to rest on the top of Allura’s head. 

“Careful Lance, you’ll ruin all your hard work,” she warns.

“That’s what I’m saying.” He leaned forward farther so he could attempt to look Allura in the eye, like a puppy unaware of its size or position in space quite yet. It was funny to watch, and I couldn’t help but laugh a little at the sight of it. 

“I meant my hair, you idiot. Get off,” she laughed and ducked under him. He fell forward a couple inches from the sudden loss of her support and had to correct by throwing a hand down on the desk next to me. The desk that I had so strategically placed in between me and them. 

He hopped down from his row and took that seat, backwards. He sat on the desk with his feet in the chair like an absolute maniac. 

“So, secret smartass-”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Fine, mullet.” I groaned and he smirked victoriously. “What does one do in detention?”

“How would I know?” I brushed off unsuccessfully, hoping that I covered my notebook less obviously. But who knows? I’ve never been good at the whole social interaction thing, so it 

was bound to bite me in the ass. 

“I’m glad you asked, you see, about twenty minutes ago, I received a text message from ID Tiny Fire Demon. The contents say: Emo boy has been to detention more times than I’ve been to Walmart. Pass it on.” He read from his phone. I raised my eyebrows. “Who am I to think emo boy is besides you, hm?”

“It could be Jensen,” I suggested, knowing fully that there was no way Lance knew who that was, and he had even less of a chance of hearing the sarcasm in my tone. 

“Who the fuck is Jensen? Are you cheating on me, mullet boy?” He slapped a hand to his chest as if to protect his broken heart. I felt my cheeks heat up at the suggestion.

“Jensen’s sitting right over there.” I made a small gesture to the boy sitting in the corner with his hood pulled over his headphones, buried in shadow.

“Oh. Hi Jensen! Are you emo boy?” Lance called, and Jensen responded by flipping him off. Couldn’t blame him. “I’m going to take that as a ‘no’ due to his finger positioning. So, all that leaves is you, unless of course you’d like to argue that you aren’t an emo boy, which would be a horrible argument, by the way.”

“Whatever.” I pushed my notebook off the desk and into my backpack. 

“You haven’t answered my question. What do you do to entertain yourself in here?” He folded forward onto the palm of his hand, resting so he looked like all arms and legs. 

“You could slide down the stairs on a table like our high IQ friend over there.”

“Are you kidding? Did you see what happened to Eric? I have to protect the assets. Are you trying to get me roadkilled?”

“Tempting.”

He fell back so his head balanced on the chair in the next row, as if his position needed to be any more precarious. I subconsciously braced myself for his fall, but when a timer when off instead, I flinched all the same. 

_Ringgg._

_Ri-Ringgg._

“Get the room back together! That’s the ten minute warning!” 

In unison, the room lifted up and moved to place everything just as it had been before the supervisor had left. We sat for two minutes before she came back in, wiggled into her seat, and dismissed us one by one to finally go home. I couldn’t wait. Confinement never boded well for my jittery bones.

Shiro had come to pick me up, and by the time I got out the door, he was already parked and waiting. The engine grumbling and gargling while smoke filtered out the exhaust. 

“How was detention?” he asked once I lifted myself into the passenger’s seat. 

“Fine.”

“Did you learn something?”

“Nope.”

“Did you break something?”

“Yup.”

“A rule, a bone, a desk?”

“A pencil.”

“Fascinating.” He put the car into drive, and we rolled away. 

For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel overly desperate to get home. In the past, home had been the only place that was consistent. Home always had Shiro, it always had Curtis, it always had mediocre cooking and daddish lectures from people who insisted they weren’t old enough to be my father even though they were filing the paperwork to be exactly that. Home was full of contradictions, complexities, broken nuclear dynamics, but it was mine, and it was the first one that had felt like it would always be there. 

So I always wanted to go back. 

Why was I impartial today?

There was already takeout spread across the table. Chopsticks set in a pile and right next to them forks for when we gave up. Being biologically Southeast Asian didn’t make me or Shiro good at the chopstick thing. Usually, it just led to a lighthearted battle about the percentage of whiteness needed to justify incompetency. 

“It’s from Chinese Kitchen, don’t eat all the dumplings,” Shiro said before disappearing down the hall. I made myself a plate of everything, a little this a little that. I chuckled to myself when I noticed the remnants of a burnt dinner, the one that must’ve come prior to takeout. 

“Shiro!” I yelled into the abyss of the house.

Nothing.

“Shiro!” I tried a little louder.

“What?” came the muffled reply. 

“Did you get egg drop soup?” 

No answer. 

“Shiro!” I screamed. 

I heard footsteps flutter down the hallway, two sets. 

“What?” he responded again, much closer this time. His face rounded the corner with Curtis just behind, badly hiding why they were too distracted to answer me the first time. 

“Did you get egg drop soup?” I asked again at a normal volume. 

“No,” he admitted with a little disgust painting the edges of his words. 

“Why not?” I whined. 

“Because you’re the only one who eats that shit,” Curtis but in while reaching over the table for the ever-worshipped dumplings sitting atop their styrofoam throne. 

“You’re mean,” I teased and dragged out a chair to sit on. Shiro and Curtis did the same and for a moment we fell into a comfortable silence while food traveled around the table and slowly faded away altogether. 

Then my phone decided to go off. 

 

_Lance_

**Heyyyyy:P:)**

 

I read the message and couldn’t help but see the way his eyebrows would dance across his forehead as he said this. 

 

_Keith_

 

**wut**

 

I slid the phone onto a napkin on the table for slightly quicker access and picked at some rice. Before I could even enjoy a couple bites, it went off three times. How could he even type that fast? 

 

_Lance_

 

**Soooo...there’s that vocab test in a couple of days…**

 

**You know I haven’t studied for it, I know I haven’t studied for it, let’s not pretend that Pidge or Allura are going to have any sympathy to help a poor lad out….**

 

**Have pity on me?**

 

_Keith_

 

**when, where?**

 

The response was as immediate as the last one, so I could watch the typing bubble flash and then disappear to show his answer. 

 

_Lance_

 

**YAY**

 

Another bubble. 

 

**My house? Tomorrow? I would go somewhere else, but I’m supposed to kind of babysit and the last time I bailed out my sister had to cover for me and she’s the worst person in the world to owe a favor so…..**

 

Another bubble showed up, but I decided I’d cut him off.

 

_Keith_

 

**Lance.**

 

**Just give me your address.**

 

_Lance_

**RIGHT**

 

And so it was. I would go to Lance’s house, during my weekend, my freetime, to undoubtedly read notes out loud to him as I did every time I helped him study. The repetition of the activity, the normalcy that it had obtained, didn’t stop me from hesitating at his door when it came time to knock. 

Just knock, you piece of shit. I raised my hand and rapped my knuckles against the wood. The second I did, I heard tiny feet pattering around and even tinier voices calling into the house. The door swung open. 

Before me was a little girl with wild hair and buzzing eyes that couldn’t have been older than six years old, holding the handle to the door with her arm all the way stretched up.

“Hello!” she greeted and waved with a smile that showed off her most recent donations to the tooth fairy. 

“Hi, is Lance here?” I asked the young girl quietly with all the politeness as if she was Lance’s mother answering the door. 

“Lance! La puerta!” she hollered into the void. I took the chance of peering over her head into the entryway of the house. It led straight into the living room where a few other dark haired children were splayed out. When the girl sprinted up the stairs, using her hands more than her feet, I dared to step into the house. 

There were three other dark-haired caramel-skinned children sitting in the living room. Two girls with fancy braids who couldn’t have cared less that I walked in as they continued to play some sort of hand game. One glance told me they were twins. There was a slightly older in age boy who looked up from his phone and pulled out an earbud when the floorboards creaked under my feet. 

“Who are you?” he accused as if I’d broken into the house to spite specifically him and he was mildly disgruntled by it. I opened my mouth to answer, believe me, I intended to answer. My answer would’ve been so eloquent, if only Lance hadn’t thundered down the steps at just that time. 

“Keith, you’re on time.”

“I am?” I wondered if I was supposed to be. 

“Sorry, I’m used to Pidge, she’s always at least twenty minutes later than I tell her to be. Luis! Échense los zapatos de la sofá, do you want mamá to have a stroke?” 

With a groan the boy lifted both of his feet off the couch and put them on the floor. I followed Lance into the kitchen at the beckon of his hand, which in turn flowed through his entire body. He did things like that with all of him. 

In the kitchen, another person I recognized as Veronica sat vaguely entertaining the youngest child yet. She sat in a booster seat with food all over the front of her shirt and smeared across her face. Veronica made her big round baby eyes trail after her finger while she desperately wiped bits of apple sauce off her cheeks. 

“Hi, Keith,” she said with a smile once she registered my face. “Still helping my lost cause of a brother I see?” she joked. Lance rolled his eyes and fumbled with a stack of cookbooks.

“Have you seen my textbooks, V?”

“No, but try that cupboard. I think I saw Carmen shove some things up there she didn’t want to get ruined.” 

Lance flung open the cupboard in question while Veronica finished cleaning of the small child’s face. I shifted from foot to foot because it seemed better to be taking up slightly different sets of space from second to second instead of staining one shape permanently. 

“Got ‘em! You are relieved, my dear sister, go, be free!” He waved around and twirled Veronica under his arm as he stole her seat. The little kid giggled. 

“Ciao, mis amores, see you later!” she called. The slamming of the door followed soon after. 

“Where’s she going?” I couldn’t stop myself from blurting.

“She has to go be a lifeguard. So now it’s my turn to prevent arson and dirty sofas,” he cheered to the baby more than to me. “This is Lisa by the way, we just call her Lee. In the living room are Luis, who’s my only brother besides Toby, but he married into the family, and Maria and Rosie who are my sisters. Lee’s my niece, though. Aren’t you, mi corazón?” He smiled at her with the same glow that I had seen many times before, but hadn’t quite gotten used to.

“How old is she?”

“Two.” He held up two fingers, apparently for the Lee’s sake, but who knows. “Her older sister’s five, Sofia, she’s the one who answered the door.”

I remembered the wild-eyed girl. The freckles that matched Lance’s, but the eyes that were anything but blue, eyes that matched the girl in front of me. 

“How many siblings do you have?” I ask, becoming increasingly aware of the number of personal questions I’d asked, but I couldn't help but want to know. 

“Six, nine including Toby and his sisters who’re technically my in-laws, but they’ve been around forever. They grew up next door. Of those, the only boys are me, Toby and Luis. We are desperately outnumbered. But hey, it taught me how to braid hair.” He winked. I suddenly understood that we now had inside jokes. I questioned why that was important. 

“Sorry, we should study,” I redirect, pulling out my notebooks that had a higher percentage of notes since I had been tutoring Lance.

“Sorry for what?” Lance cocked his head while he let Lee tug on his finger. 

“For asking so many questions,” I mumbled because it was obvious.

“Please,” he groaned and rolled his eyes. “My family is literally my favorite thing to talk about, ask all the questions you want.” I could feel the sincerity behind the statement like the first warm breeze of spring, and a small smile cracked my lips. I remembered his dive for an action figure, how it was a trivial story, one he laughed at, and I wondered what he'd do for his family and those he loved. Hopefully not everything.

“I think we should teach you English first.”

“Alright fine, you’re the boss.”

He got up and started pacing around the kitchen. I’d gotten used to this kind of behavior after we’d studied together consistently, sitting still while processing information was not in Lance’s skillset. Raising one eyebrow was, however, that would always get to me. 

“What’s a juxtaposition?” I began. 

“Okay, so I know I’ve heard that word before so you’re not making it up,” he finished easily like it was an answer. 

“So what is it?” I pressed. 

“Couldn’t tell ya.”

“Placing two opposite things next to each other to make a point,” I said.

“Placing two opposite things next to each other to make a point, placing two opposite things next to each other to make a point is a juxtaposition. A juxtaposition is placing unlike things side by side to prove something,” he went on for a moment. I let him finish before moving onto the next vocab word. 

“What is an allusion?”

“When someone alludes to something.” He threw himself onto the countertop. 

“Care to be more specific?” I tapped my pen and pulled my feet up unto the chair I was sitting in, allowing myself to get comfortable. Lance jumped back down from the counter and crossed the kitchen again. He picked at something invisible on the wall. 

“Awiba,” Lee chirped with her hands in the air. Lance lifted her instinctively and walked her around the kitchen with her. 

“Something about the bible right?” It took me a second to remember that’s what we were doing. Watching Lance cradle his niece into his side while she fingered his jacket strings was not on the to-do list.

“Um...sort of?” I stumbled. Lance sighed. 

“Give me a hint,” he begged. 

While I tried to think of something that wouldn’t give it away, another new face came through the archway to the kitchen with loud feet.

“Lance!” she yelled. 

“Daisy!” Lance mocked.

“Maria and Rosie are fighting in the backyard,” she explained with more than a little annoyance. Lance groaned and bent his knees like the weight of the information was too much for him to bear standing all the way upright. 

“Okay, I’m coming.” He lifted Lee up from under her arms and held her out to me. “Take her.”

Sirens.

The child hovered in front of me with a confused look on its face, she glanced back at Lance. I did the same. I waited for him to laugh at his own joke like he always did. He didn’t. He was serious. 

I tripped to a standing position, clambering around so that my hands hovered in front of her. I couldn’t back down in front of a challenge. That’s what this was, a challenge. Lance didn’t believe I could handle the child. I grasped her under the arms like Lance had been and felt her weight shift into my palms. 

Her large brown eyes locked into mine with determination. She giggled. Next to me, I heard Daisy facepalm before she trotted along behind Lance out the door. Acknowledging my strange position, I placed Lee on my hip in the most natural way I could and tried to keep up with them. 

Outside, sure enough, the twins that I’d seen playing hand games in perfect symmetry before, were now fighting each other. Now, I was an only child, even before I got put into the foster system, so I didn’t know how sibling relationships were supposed to work. I’d heard rumors that girls never fought with their fists, only their words, that they were somehow the weaker, tamer sex. I’m here to inform you that’s wrong. So wrong. Maria and Rosie were scratching, biting, pulling, shoving, kicking, and when one of them got out of range, they were throwing whatever they could get their hands on. Oh yeah, and they were screaming. In Spanish, so I couldn’t tell you exactly what was said, but you don’t need to know a language to know what the intent is. 

They intended complete annihilation. 

Luis was filming everything with a shit-eating grin on his face. 

Lance grabbed them both by the ears and lifted them to their feet where they had been previously grappling on the ground. He shouted something at both of them, and they nodded grimly. He let go of their ears and continued to rant while the twins hung their heads to the ground like they’d just developed a great interest in geocaching and the coordinates were right there. 

He threw his arm toward the house with some finality, and they scurried in through the door. He looked back at me with eyes that were bluer than any other McClain. He took a deep breath that traveled up and down his body, lifting him up, then dropping him down.

“So,” he began. “How about that hint?” He gave a lopsided grin. 


	6. Chapter 6

Allura was made of a different kind of stuff, I decided one day. It was just another Thursday, filled with snarky remarks and monotone lectures, the only thing that changed was that Shiro was “unable to provide his ride-giving services”, so I was stuck glancing around for anyone willing to go out of their way to drive me home. 

People made of the normal kind of stuff naturally refused or made excuses. Allura sat wandered into the courtyard with her hair wound through a braid. Waterfall?

_“Come on, mullet, you don’t know what a waterfall braid is?”_

Yeah. Definitely a waterfall. She must’ve felt my eyes on her. 

“You good, Keith? You look kind of lost,” she asked kindly. Her eyes flicked me up and down with a smear of colors indistinguishable from so far away. Without meaning to, she coaxed out an honest answer. 

“Shiro’s car broke down again, so he can’t come pick me up. Do you know if there are any buses that get off around here?” I asked. 

She laughed at me as if the question was outrageous. 

“Like I’m letting you take the bus, text me your address, let’s go.” She began to walk away, turning her shoulder in a way that commanded I move to. My steps stuttered forward hastily to catch up to her. 

“You don’t have to drive me, I can figure it out, you know, I’ve taken the bus before,” I explained. She scrolled through her phone and flipped keys around her finger. 

“I’m taking you home, Keith. Accept the kindness.”

Her words sunk deep. Why was I unable to accept her kindness? It had to be because she was made of that different stuff, the stuff that was a magnet to the truth and understood more than the normal stuff. 

I followed her to a clean blue car with pink dice hanging from the rear view mirror. The engine started smoothly and without a hiccup, which was weird since it had been so long since the car I was sitting in met those standards. She backed out of her parking spot slowly and methodically while the dash displayed a view of her rear. Fancy.

“I have to make a little detour, do you want me to drop you off first or take you with me?” She clicked through on the text I sent her with my address until it popped up on her car screen. Screen that was in her car? 

“You can take me with you, I don’t care.”

“Okay, that’s what’s happening then.” She typed another destination in between the school and my house. The map drew a blue line to the location and started listing directions before Allura muted it. 

“So, Shiro usually drives you home?” she prompted oh so innocently. 

“Yeah.”

“Where do I know that name from?” Her tone lilted around, matching the tension in her eyebrows. 

“Um,” I hesitated. “He’s a manager at the community center?” I guessed with little confidence.

“Oh my God! Takashi Shirogane!” she sounded while flipping her head toward me with a pointed finger. Surprisingly, the car didn’t swerve more than an inch. I started slightly from the sudden change in volume.

“Yeah?”

“My dad used to send me there after school all the time when he was working, Shiro was a volunteer or something. He’s a manager now?” she continued, having much more fun reminiscing of a time when she knew Shiro. I swallowed the feelings that came up. Shiro must’ve been in his teens, way before I knew him. That was fine. 

“Yeah, he does all the scheduling for events and stuff,” I explained. Allura hummed her assent, then switched gears as if she could sense my discomfort. 

“So how do you know him?” she enunciated carefully. 

“He’s my foster dad slash brother slash the idiot who can’t keep a working car.”

“That’s nice, what’s your least favorite part about living with him?” She looked at me while taking a turn. 

“Least favorite?” 

“Yeah, everyone always asks your favorite, but I think it’s more telling to ask the least. Because if you genuinely enjoy it, it’s a difficult question and you have to come up with something mundane and usually hilarious. But if you hate it you can't lie and say it's great. So answer the question," she pressed. 

"Neither of them can cook to save their lives,” I admitted. 

“Nothing?” 

“Can’t even boil a hot dog.” 

Allura laughed out loud and fell back into her seat. It pried a smile from my face once I realized the ridiculousness of their incompetence. I watched the cars around us mill around while Allura composed herself and found where she was going again. Once we were out of heavy traffic and moving steadily again, she started the conversation.

“So, Shiro found himself a man?” she wiggled her eyebrows at me. I laughed at that. She seemed proud that she’d gotten me to laugh, so I quickly stifled it.

“Yeah, his name’s Curtis.”

“Cool, cool. And you?” 

“Whu...what?” I sputtered. 

“Do you have a man? I couldn’t be more clear here dude.” 

The question rattled around in my brain as if I had doubts about the answer, but it was probably just because I’d never been asked that question so directly. It was always surrounded by bush beating and ‘um...no, I don’t have a girlfriend’ corrections. 

“...no, no I do not,” I finally managed to push out of my mouth, but even as I said the words they sounded like a lie. Maybe I’d used to many negatives, didn’t they cancel out at some point?

“Okay, well, now that you’ve shared that with me, I’m going to share something with you, but you aren’t allowed to tell anyone. Got it?” She stuck me with her gaze, and even at this close proximity, I couldn’t decipher the color of her eyes. 

I nodded my response. 

“Good. Now, in a few seconds we’re going to get out of the car and you’re going to meet my secret girlfriend. She’s a secret because of this whole my father works with her father works with Lotor’s father clusterfuck that I really would rather not get into. Just trust me that it’s better if nobody knew about it.” She pulled the car into a parking spot and gave me a pointed look. “Not even Lance.”

“Allura, your secret’s safe with me,” I assure her with as much sincerity I can manage. What had she meant by ‘not even Lance’? Why did she feel the need to clarify? Was there something I was missing?

My mind only had so much time to spiral out of control before we were setting foot into the parking lot, and it had a whole other list of things to process. 

We were in a parking lot, that was for sure, but the building laid out in front of me was something I couldn’t define so easily. The bottom floor looked like a strip mall, restaurants, boutiques, a laundromat, but the floor above it had windows with curtains and poorly watered plants hanging over the window sills. Strangest of all was the graffiti. Usually hidden and painted over, this building seemed to flaunt art of every style across its front. 

I checked my surroundings to see if I recognized something nearby, but there were only highways and gas stations for a good ways in every direction. The city limits could be still viewed far to my left. 

“Where are we?” I asked once my pace matched Allura’s deliberate strides. 

“This is my girlfriend’s secret condominium. She started it when she found a loophole in her trust fund and has been using it as a nonprofit organization for the better of the people ever since.” She glowed with unmistakable pride. 

I took in the buildings surrounding, like its own private community.

“How old is your girlfriend?”

“Eighteen.”

We arrived at a door that flew open just as Allura lifted her arm to knock. Behind it stood a girl with long blonde hair and a wide smile. 

“You’re here, let’s go.” She rushed out the door while grabbing Allura’s hand, marching into the parking lot. Allura giggled at the whole display and allowed herself to be dragged along. 

“Romelle, this is my friend, Keith. Keith, this is my girlfriend, Romelle,” she chanted to the pace of her steps and the swing of their hands between them. 

I smiled and waved at my new acquaintance like the word _friend_ hadn’t hit me so hard. Allura was my friend? I liked that. Friend. Did that make Lance and Pidge my friends too? What about Hunk? Was he my friend?

I let Romelle take the front seat as she was obviously Allura’s priority and settled into the back with my knees bunched up. 

The drive home was fast, short, much more careless than the cautious turns and stops Allura had made on the way to the condominium. Something about Romelle’s sparkling attitude must’ve relaxed Allura significantly, and before I knew it, I was waving goodbye with a smile on my face, watching them roll briskly away. 

Home is people. That’s why I was indifferent. 

“There you are, did you get a ride?” Shiro wondered once I waltzed through the door.

“Yeah, a girl named Allura. She said she knew you.”

I pulled out my phone to check for any messages that I’d received since I left school. Nothing. Of course nothing, I had a maximum of four friends and they definitely had better things to do on a Friday night. 

“Allura…” he tested the name. “Any chance she has white hair?” 

“Yup.”

“I remember her. She used to come to the center every night, for almost eight years actually. How’s she doing?” he queried, genuinely interested as he always was. 

“She’s fine, much more organized than I could ever be.”

“She gets that from her dad. Do yourself a favor and avoid meeting him while Lotor’s family is in the room. They have had a beef for as long as I can remember, but I have no idea what it’s about,” he explained with vigor. 

“Yeah...so, when do you think you’re going to fix that car?” I pushed. This was not the first time I’d been stranded somewhere because the only car we had happened to be a pile of shit.

“When I get to it. In the meantime, you could help me out in restoring the other one. It takes two to tango, you know.” I got flashbacks to school lectures. _Two wrongs don’t make a right. Don’t punch Tommy just because he dared you to. Blah, blah, blah._

I let my body relax against the door jam to the kitchen and watched Shiro lift the newspaper and begin to read it through a pair of half-moon glasses. My phone went off in my pocket. 

 

_Lance_

 

**Hello my hairstyle impaired friend**

 

**Wyd rn???**

 

**I’m bored :( :( :(**

 

I glazed over the messages with less attention than they deserved. He was asking me to hang out. I couldn’t be the first one he texted. The rest of his friends must be busy. Still, I felt a little bit of warmth dance up the back of my neck. 

Somewhere in the back of my brain I heard the newspaper shift, so I flicked my gaze up from the screen and pushed it into my back pocket once more. 

“Who’s that?” Shiro questioned innocently. He cleared his throat to hide his smirk. 

“Just Lance,” I blurted. 

“Just Lance? Is this the same Lance who you’ve been tutoring since school started? You’ve been spending an awful lot of time with _Just_ Lance.” He folded the newspaper completely and set it back on the pile of mail where it came from. He rolled his glasses between his fingers. 

The way he enunciated his words made it impossible to evade his meaning. It would’ve been easy to guess either way, he had a way of always prying his way into my business like he had a right to be there for saving me.

“Oh my God, Shiro, does everything have to mean something to you? Can’t it just _be_?” I defended. Not Lance. Ew. The guy drove me crazy.

“Okay, I’m allowed to ask questions. You know, as your parental figure, I’m going to be concerned about your life and what’s going on with it, so you have to surrender a little bit of information, that’s part of the deal,” Shiro reasoned with his palms splayed and swaying. 

“Deal? What deal?” I knew what deal he meant. I was daring him to say it out loud.

“When we took you in we agreed on a partnership-”

That right there struck a chord. 

“When you took me in you agreed to feed me in exchange for a stipend, you haven’t signed the adoption papers. I don’t belong to you, I get to be my own person. And until you prove that we’re a family, you don’t have any rights to me,” I burst. 

“Keith…” he breathed. Not shocked, but saddened by my outburst. I hadn’t gone off like that in a very long time, and never at Shiro himself. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing!” I insisted. “Fuck, nothing is going on Shiro, I just wish you would stop pretending you want me here at all.”

The second the words left my mouth, I felt their validity. Home is people, and I’d lost mine a long time ago.

I rounded the corner and flung the front door open, careful not to slam it. I was in control.

 

_Keith_

 

**I can come over I guess**

 

_Lance_

 

**Woohooooo!!**

 

**Text me when you’re here emo boii ;)**

 

With another glance at the phone, I marched down the front porch.

I heaved open the garage door to dredge out something I hadn’t touched since moving in. My old motorcycle. It was a gift to me from a friend that I barely remember knowing, and it had served me well when I was still bouncing around. Now it sat underneath a tarp, hoisted on its stand, waiting patiently. 

And hey, it only took two miles to bring back all my muscle memory. Two miles and seven almost disasters…

 

_Keith_

 

**here.**

 

I swung my leg over the old bike in a way that had been so natural only years ago, now it felt strange, rehearsed. I wished for my car to be working at last.

I heard commotion inside the house, people arguing and stomping around. A voice got very close to the front door that I was quickly approaching and suddenly the door opened. 

“Okay, I did it, where’s my candy?” Luis called. It took me a second to realize the words weren’t directed at me and I stared at the open door he’d left behind. I hesitantly stepped beyond the threshold. 

“You don’t get any I just said that so you would do it for me,” said Daisy. She stuck her tongue out at him for good measure and then sprinted from Luis’s sudden barrel roll toward her. They ran screeching down the hallway. 

“Uh...Lance?” I asked into the newly empty space. 

“I’m in the kitchen, just close the door behind you.” I heard from just around the corner. 

Sure enough, Lance was in the kitchen. Also present were about a hundred different bowls with a variety of oddly shaped spoons dangling from each rim precariously. Flour and other materials darted around the surfaces, even the ceiling. How? I’m not sure.

Lance himself was peppered in many different things. Flour, yes, a ruffled blue apron, yes that too, but most importantly, the most prideful smile that only Lance could wear surrounded by his own personally made disaster. I sighed deep into my lungs and let it out. All anger from before instantly diminishing to a tiny blip buried deep into the bottle of emotions. Just under the SOS note someone was supposed to find on the other side of the sea. 

“Well hello. Hunk, say hello!” he yelled at an iPad that sat propped up on a Tupperware container. I heard shifting and electronic crackling. 

“Hey, Keith. So, Lance. You should check the cookies.” His eyes settled just below the camera lens. 

“Really? I just put them in though… I want them to get nice and comfy in there so they can really feel the love that I put into them and stuff,” he rambled. 

“Lance, the only reason these cookies have survived this far is because of me. Check on the damned baked goods or so help me I will lick your face.”

“Okay, jeez.”

He cracked open the oven and the scent of caramelizing sugar and fresh spices poured out. It seemed Hunk was right because the sweet treats were perfectly brown and ready to be devoured. I felt my stomach rumble at the thought. 

“They seem ready to me,” I guessed. 

“Are they still shiny but golden?” the slightly distorted voice of Hunk inquired over the phone. 

“Exactly as you say it is, Hunk. Once again, you’ve marveled us all with your talents as a baker, it’s almost like you do this all the time,” Lance mocked lightheartedly.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I’ve gotta go, or I’ll be late.”

“Okay, fine. But you have to tell me where you’re going at some point or I’ll demote you from best friend status!” 

The call ended without any further response from Hunk. 

“Asshole,” he whispered to himself. “You want some cookies?” he suddenly perked up, making my presence suddenly mean something and feel so much more comfortable. I let myself sit down at the kitchen table and push my feet out slightly. 

“What kind are they?” I asked when the context clues of ingredients did nothing to aid my guess. 

“Snickerdoodles. You know, the best cookies in the history of the ever-expanding universe, the only treat that could possibly be worth stepping on a lego, el amor de mi vida, the heart of humanity.” He stopped when his eyes fell on my face. I must have been looking at him strangely because he completely stopped narrating his love for something as simple as this cookie as if it was a religion and he was the priest who covered the first row in spit and accidently ran into one of them while getting inspired. 

He froze mid gesture, holding his hand splayed out in the air where it had been punctuating his description of the vastness of humanity. Why that needed to be included in a cookie conversation is a question that I don’t think I needed the answer to because he didn’t need one to do it. 

“What?” he said with his eyebrows.

“Nothing, I just think we must live in different universes.” 

That was the perfect thing to say. He reacted instantly as he did most things. His face exploded into confusion with wide eyes and curling lips. Then he threw one of his arms around so that his entire body was forced to follow and face me head on. Suddenly, I was keenly aware that I had all of his attention.

“Then what, pray tell, is the core of existence in your universe?” 

I translated that to mean, what is your favorite kind of cookie? 

“Peanut butter,” I answered simply. He seemed to think this over, like reaching across the aisle in political debate. 

He pulled a chair toward himself to sit on and tossed his feet, clothed in penguin socks, onto a stack of trash that had accumulated on the table. 

“So, you come into my house, barbecue sauce on your titties, and you tell me that peanut butter cookies are better than snickerdoodles”

“First, I have no barbecue sauce nor do I have titties,” I replied rather easily considering. 

“I meant your soul titties, but continue.”

“And yes, peanut butter cookies are better.”

His head cocked and his eyebrows pushed together as if they had thoughts of their own and moved independently from Lance’s conscious thought. I would hate to see the guy try and lie. His emotions were always so obvious.

“Okay, why? Convince me.” He leaned forward on his hand more for the thought of the pose than any actual convenience. Lance did things for aesthetic, not for comfort. It was adorable to watch, and it screamed sarcasm, but his tone betrayed him. Despite his jokes, he was sentimental, and he was as curious about my life as day one when he had to meet me. A random person. 

It was there that I meant to lie, but staring into his eyes, blue as the heart of a glacier, the truth came out instead. It was how he’d sucked comfortable confessions from me so many times before. 

“When I was a kid, my dad wasn’t a very good cook, neither was my mom, and I was a picky eater, so dinner was always a battle between who was the most stubborn asshole. Then it became a competition to see who could make something everyone would eat. My mom won when she stole someone’s recipe for peanut butter cookies.” I felt the silence creep in around me and strip my story bare. “It’s purely nostalgic, they were literally the only thing I ate for almost a whole year, so I’m probably part peanut butter cookie.”

“Oh, I get it.” A smirk began to spread. “You were like their dog, so they let you lick the peanut butter jar. That also explains the hair,” he went on, naturally diffusing the weight in the atmosphere. 

“At least in my universe I can spell ‘independent’,” I shot at him. 

“That’s not fair!”

“It is too fair.”

“How?”

“Because it’s true,” I enunciated slowly as if explaining a complex concept to a three year old. Sometimes that was what tutoring him felt like, blumbering along with an overgrown puppy learning to do tricks like those dogs who can read. 

“Whatever-” Something caught his attention, and he stopped abruptly. He lifted himself into the living room in a couple of single movement strides and suddenly a radio announcer’s voice grew louder through background static. 

“...so it might be time to check if you even have a winter coat to break out after the long warm months, if this trajectory is right. What do you think, Jeff?”

“I think you’re absolutely right, Jim, it’s looking like the frost will hit in a couple more months, but with the way things have been changing lately, I wouldn’t be surprised if that gets updated again in the near future.”

“Of course, now in just a few minutes we have Loriella Stevenson here about the growing infrastructure problems in public schools, is it a question of funding or maintenance? We’ll be back, right after this.” 

I heard something clatter like a table being suddenly trusted with too much weight. 

“Shit.”

I wound my torso around the back of the chair I was sitting in so I could see what was going on. Lance was stumbling through a bunch of drawers, searching for something or other, while he tore off his apron.

“Hey, Lance?” I asked curiously. 

“Yup,” he shot while slamming a drawer shut.

“Whatcha doing?”

“The frost is coming early this year, so I have to plant the roses.” He paused to swivel around. “Right now, but I can’t find the little bastards for the life of me.”

He was planting roses. 

I stood up to help him search. 

Before I could overthink anything, I was outside, sitting in the dirt with my sleeves rolled up, making holes while Lance followed behind with seeds. _‘Your helping me plant flowers, mullet, like poetry’._ He hummed softly to himself and set each one down gently, adding it to his family. 

I got caught up in the rhythm, scooching over every few motions so the row could continue, keeping my pacing so it matched Lance’s, so I didn’t notice when he spoke so quietly.

“Hm?” 

I looked up to his face. He had gotten a lot closer at some point, but that was a consequence of planting small seeds in smaller holes. Spaces grew smaller. 

"I asked you if you wanted me to tie your hair back, it's kind of all over the place."

Of course, I'd never done such a thing before, and I could see through my hair just fine, but nevertheless I agreed. I remembered why when Lance smiled. 

Naturally, he was prepared for my answer before I’d even processed what was happening and yanked a hair tie from his wrist while flipping around so he was kneeling behind me. The air shifted.

“You have so much hair...when was the last time you got it cut?”

I struggled to produce a response, but he took my silence as one anyway. 

“You’re _hesitating!_ God, Keith, maybe that’s why it's stuck back in time, all the way to the last time you touched it.”

“It’s not a mullet.”

“Right, like you would know.” I felt the way his words affected the movement of his fingers, all of him punctuating his disbelief. At least that meant I never had to work hard to figure out his thoughts. His existence was so obvious once I stopped trying to block him out, I couldn’t help but notice what he was doing. 

“Are you braiding it?” I accused, faking my annoyance more than anything. 

“Yes, it's pretty.”

Pretty?

“Just keep planting, if I don’t finish those I’m a dead man.” Pretty. “My mom plants them every year so she can give them to people in her family, and this year it;s supposed to be my turn to do the seeds because Veronica did it last year.” Pretty… “And if I mess it up because the damn frost came early, well, then I might as well change my name, you know?”

“Did you just call my hair pretty?” I interrupted his tale, not that I hadn’t heard it before, piece of it. His fingers paused their winding across my scalp. 

“I did,” he confirmed earnestly. Then, with his usual dipshittines, “Does that offend you, your highness?”

I accepted the challenge before I heard it and responded with the same amount of sarcastic daring. Sarcasm I could do, even with someone bending my hair through itself and running their fingers through every strand like it was somehow special.

“I just didn’t know you were into mullets, McClain.” I waited for his defense.

“Well, I didn’t know you were into sitting in the dirt for long periods of time. We’re learning so much about each other, aren’t we?”

I had nothing to say. How was I supposed to respond when he failed to redact his compliment, when instead he suggested learning things about me made his fingers relax back into their rhythm and his friendly tone return. 

“Tell me, is it because the dirt is cold like your emo soul? From the early approaching frost?”

“No, you’ve just tainted me. After spending so much time with you, sitting in worm feces is actually enjoyable in comparison.”

“You wound me!” he gasped through his laughter. “But you’re braid’s done Bee Tee Dubs.”

“I can’t believe you just said that out loud. What even are you?”

“The most fabulous person you’ve ever met. Not including Allura because she’s royalty.”

 _Royalty deserving of a rose,_ I added silently to myself. So he must know she was made of that different kind of stuff as well, but he didn’t know about the secret girlfriend. I spoke mostly to stop my train of thought from reeling off the tracks. 

“Also not including Pidge, Hunk, Shiro, Curtis, Shay, Acxa, Zethrid, Ezor, Jensen, Lotor-”

“How dare you!” He was now perched in front of me again, like he just happened to fall into my personal space, so I got a front row seat to the idiotic levels of offense he got from my list as it descended.

“What?” I mumbled in fake ignorance.

“Jensen is far less fabulous than me, he has no sense of style,” he smirked, knowing full well that wasn’t what I expected him to object to. 

“Really now?” Then I either got really brave, or really stupid, when I said, “Well, in my homosexual opinion, I’d say he has a thorough understanding of color.”

Lance didn’t skip a beat. In fact, a flicker in his eyes gave away that he was thrilled at the challenge. 

“Well, in my bisexual opinion, black isn’t a color. It’s the absence of color.”

Did he just-?

“You’re the absence of intelligence.”

Right, we’re ignoring that. I should’ve known. Because why would we confront our friend coming out to us in the form of a verbal shitpost? That would be almost sane.

“You’re the absence of happiness,” he retorted.

“No, actually, I’m the absence of family.”

Lance sighed like it was the fifth time he’d dropped his pencil box and watching them scatter around the floor was all that he could manage for now. 

“Good job, Keith, you went and made it depressing.”

“I’m pretty sure you did that when you refused to argue that Lotor was more fabulous than you, there was no digging out of our graves once you pushed us into that one.” 

He chuckled so his shoulders fluffed about. Then something changed, and he was looking at me like he looked at Allura after she slapped Lotor in the face, or how he would look at his niece when she called him tio, when she pressed too hard on the T and it came out distorted. This was a look that I had learned. 

“Whatever happened to your parents anyway?” He let the silence fall around us, and I suddenly became grateful that we were outside because otherwise the space would’ve suffocated me instantly, and I refused to die surrounded by flower seeds. I paid attention to my breathing so that I wouldn’t die, again, _flower seeds_ , but forgot that questions needed answers. 

“Nevermind, sorry, that was a personal question.” He shook his head a little like it would Etch-a-Sketch what he’d just done.

“No.” _Yes._ “It’s fine, it was a long time ago.” _That doesn’t mean it stopped hurting._ It must’ve been the blue in his eyes. He waited. For someone who made so much noise, he was oddly comfortable in the heaviest of silences. 

The answer came out before I was ready for it, completely on impulse, how most of my actions fall into fruition. 

“My mom was from Korea, she moved to Texas on a Visa, and married my dad. When I was six or so, my dad went to war and died on the field, so they investigated the family and everything. Once they found out my mom wasn’t a citizen they sent her back home. Usually my dad and I were enough to keep her from getting deported, but apparently me alone wasn’t. I’ve been in foster care ever since.” I could tell the brevity of my explanation jarred him a little, but then he set himself right again.

“My mom came here on a Visa too. She got a green card once she had all of us though and she bought the farm. She’s from Cuba.” 

 _I know,_ I think, _I remember. You dove into a lake for an action figure._

The soft rumble of tires on gravel caught my attention. A pick up truck pulled carefully into the driveway. Lance lurched up to greet the owner of said pickup truck, racing around to the driver’s seat to aid them in any way I can. From this behavior alone, I should’ve been able to tell it was Lance’s mother, but what made it indisputable was the shadowy silhouette that suddenly became visible on the other side of the open door. She was small, lacking the limbs Lance carried himself on, but sturdy, like her soul filled her body to the brim and pushed the edges until they were swollen.

“What are you boys doing outside?” she lilted while piling groceries into Lance’s open arms. 

“Planting the roses, the frost is supposed to be early this year.”

“They say that every time someone got something wrong, they blame it on the universe, they must’ve got the time wrong, not us.” She turned her eyes towards me where I had moved closer, standing for the first time in a while, and I finally got to see where Lance’s brilliant blue came from. “And what might your name be, querido mio?” 

“Keith,” I told her simply, finding that embellishing was unnecessary under her gaze. 

“Keith, corazon, take a bag, I don’t like to take more than one trip. It wears one path down too far.” 

Together, we lugged in an entire aisle at Costco in the requested single trip. Lance blabbered about school, Pidge, Hunk, a mysterious red spot on the back of his neck, whatever was on his mind, he spilled to his mother. She listened with open eyes and open ears, nodding where appropriate and not hesitating to share her honesty. She examined the red spot and slapped it when she discovered it was just a small bug bite. Lance squealed at the thought. 

“Do you need anything else, mamá?” He looked up to her from two feet above her head. 

“No, go have fun, mi amor.”

“It was nice to meet you, Mrs. McClain.”

“You will call me Rosa, or you will not address me,” she commanded with a smirk I recognized too well. 

“Okay...Rosa, it was nice to meet you,” I corrected.

She grinned. “Much better. I’ll make you something to eat later, you’re skinny as a flagpole.”

I followed Lance down the hallway he had retreated down. 

I found myself in a room only slightly smaller than the kitchen that was littered in the hoarders dream. There were tables of all shapes and sizes, some stacked on top of each other to make bunk tables, chairs, stools, papers (colored and non), stuffed animals, photographs, art projects, a mural covering an entire wall, and toward the corner that Lance had gravitated toward, a grand piano. 

The surface was black and reflective as if every use heightened it, rubbing away its sadness. There was a tarp along the back that protected it from a stack of notebooks, filled to the brim with paper wrinkled from use. Lance sat on a bench just beside it and turned back to face me. 

“Do you play?” I asked. It seemed the natural question. He raised an eyebrow and examined the piano as if this was the first time he’d noticed it was there. 

“Yeah?” he said. I didn’t dare sit down next to him, he was the only one allowed to break the line I’d drawn, so I leaned against a patch of wall nearby. “What time do you have to be home?”

“Whenever,” I mumbled, recalling why I’d left home in the first place. Home is people…”I have time to listen to a few songs,” I suggested not-so-subtly. 

“You don’t want to hear me play the piano,” he laughed. 

“Don’t tell me what I want, you said you can play?” I crossed my arms over my chest. 

“Sort of.”

“Prove it.”

I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist the challenge, and since I let the idea of hearing him play the piano cross my mind, there was nothing else I wanted more. 

“Fine. But we’re taking a shot of Study Juice first.” Idiot.

He gathered a thermos from somewhere under a pile of old newspaper and a couple of Dixie cups from the cardboard box with a hole in it. He poured two glasses with a poised finger like the drink was deserving of much more respect than it really was. 

I grabbed my cup because I knew it was best to just go along with it.

“Cheers,” Lance declared ceremoniously.

“To what?” I critiqued with a healthy amount of annoyance. 

“To the universe, she runs on her own time like a fucking queen and I respect that.”

What can I say? The boy always found something worth celebrating. 

I threw the concoction back down my throat, and it tasted like bile. 

Shortly, the sounds of the piano started up. While I was still massaging the taste from my mouth, and concentrating on making my position seem casual, the notes floated past effortlessly. Each a breath of air, a wave of an arm, a tap of a foot. A piece of Lance himself. 

It wasn’t that the music was particularly virtuous, but that he played each chord carefully, gave each more attention than it deserved. He cared so much. 

I moved to put my Dixie cup down somewhere more convenient, and find a new spot upon my return. I folded my upper body over the long makeshift table of the piano and watched him play, watched his fingers that had danced through my hair simply sing through the keys. His eyes ducked in shadow, focused on his accuracy, caring. His eyebrows slightly pinched together. He grinned at me. 

And there was no ground beneath my feet. I was falling, flailing through the air. Notes tumbled around me and sing of serenity on broken wings under the gentle touches, so delicate, so precise, so _Lance._

It begged me to listen to the story he was telling, and all I could think is how much I wanted to play that song with him. Sit next to him. All I could think is how much I wanted to kiss him. 

Free falling without a parachute, I was utterly fucked.


End file.
